


Woke Up New

by LostAmongTheUndergrowth



Series: Wriggle up on dry land [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anorexia, Bisexual Remus Lupin, Canon Divergence - Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Depression, Eating Disorders, Food Issues, Hospitals, M/M, Merlin Emrys has anorexia, Not Canon Compliant, Past Merlin/Arthur Pendragon - Freeform, Past Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks, Past Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Remus Lupin Lives, Remus Lupin has anorexia, Sad Remus Lupin, Set one year before the epilogue, Severus Snape Lives, Weight Issues, Werewolf Remus Lupin, not that it really matters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-14 23:35:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17517989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostAmongTheUndergrowth/pseuds/LostAmongTheUndergrowth
Summary: Ever since he was bitten at age five, Remus Lupin has turned to starvation to cope when his back's against the wall, always managing to narrowly avoid confrontation or intervention by carefully controlling his disorder. But 50 years on, his guilt at surviving the Second Wizarding War when Dora and Sirius did not has seen his illness slowly spiral out of control. Now he must figure out, once and for all, whether he wants to live, and if so, whether it's too late for him to turn things around.---Eventual pairing: Remus/Severus; references to past Sirius/Remus, Remus/Nymphadora. Other than Remus' and Severus' canon-divergent survival, which will be explained, all other deaths happened as in canon.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that this story contains depictions of severe, entrenched and long-term anorexia. Weights will be mentioned from chapter 4. Part of recovery is learning to practice good self-care around what material on eating disorders you put into your brain: know yourself! If you can relate to this story, I feel you and I'm sorry.

 

 

_The first time I made coffee for just myself, I made too much of it_  
_But I drank it all just cos you hate it when I let things go to waste_  
_And I wandered through the house like a little boy lost at the mall_  
_And an astronaut could've seen the hunger in my eyes from space_

_And I sang:_  
_Oh, What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?_  
_What do I do without you?_

                                                                      _\-- The Mountain Goats_

 

* * *

 

 

It was difficult to feel comfortable today, Remus thought, ignoring the small voice in the back of his mind that suggested the uncomfortable days had been growing more and more frequent of late. The cold, gnawing ache he always felt inside his body was joined by the dull ache of muscles and joints that usually followed in the days after his full-moon transformation.

 

Climbing out of the shower, he wiped just enough of the bathroom mirror to see his face through the steam. There was a small scratch above his left eyebrow; he must have clocked himself accidentally with a claw, but it would have been much worse had he been a werewolf for the duration, rather than a harmless beast. No one knew where Severus Snape lived these days, what he was doing, or what condition he was in, but an owl had showed up once a month at Remus’ townhouse in Cardiff with a vial of Wolfsbane potion for years now, and he took it every month because he did not know what else to do with it.

 

Sometimes he thought that he might stop taking the potion; he thought that Severus - wherever he was - would understand. But then Remus would imagine Teddy all alone, and Harry, and the damage an unfettered werewolf could do to others - not only to Remus himself - and he would swallow the Wolfsbane down, hating himself more for his weakness every time.

 

He turned away from the mirror, quickly, before he could catch sight of anything below his eyes, and began wrapping himself into layer after layer of soft wool clothing. Downstairs, he hesitated before switching on the heat. _Just half an hour,_ he thought, _half an hour maximum,_ just enough to warm himself up and trap the air in the room. He felt guilty, frivolous, for wasting power, but lighting a fire required hauling firewood in from the garage and he just didn’t think he had the energy. Not today.

 

The undersides of Remus’ feet connected painfully with the carpeted floor as he walked, bones sliding and clicking together. He looked, helpless, in the direction of the kitchenette with its perpetually gleaming, empty bench-top; walked over to face it, thought about what he could make to eat. His stomach flipped: desire, revulsion, hunger. He did not keep bread, but there was oatmeal, somewhere, Merlin knew how old. Perhaps there would be weevils in it, or maggots. Remus cracked his knuckles nervously at the thought and put the kettle on to make tea instead, pouring liberal amounts of cold water in the top of his mug so that he could drink the black brew standing over the sink in a few quick gulps and make another cup immediately.

 

 _Merlin_ he had a headache. And this weakness in his bones - it was getting worse every month. Perhaps it was his age. He had a shift at the soup kitchen this evening and was keenly aware that he would have to force himself to eat before then, at least enough to rid himself of the fuzzy black patches in his periphery. He was too old to be turning into a wolf once a month, he thought; that must be it.

 

The calendar above the sink alerted him to the fact, just in time, that it was one of mornings Ginny would visit; she had taken to dropping by the day after the full moon and checking in on him, no matter how much he protested he could look after himself. The visits had been enjoyable, once; he liked Ginny - no, he loved her, she was funny and bright and sensible, and her conversation was easy and light - and they would drink tea together and gossip. Things had seemed strained in recent months, and now Remus wished she would give herself permission - or allow him to give her permission - to just put an end to the visits.

 

He shuffled to the freezer, hoisting a heavy, ceramic dish out of it and beginning to chisel the contents unceremoniously into the bin under the sink with a butter knife. It was hard work - the lasagne or whatever it was had frozen fast to the pan - and Remus was breathing hard by the time the doorbell rang.

 

“Coming!” he called, sluicing the Ginny’s dish under some warm water from the tap so it would not be immediately obvious that it was straight from the freezer and, moments earlier, had still been full of food.

 

Ginny beamed at him when he opened the door, but her eyes flicked down Remus’ body and back up to his face, and she had to school her expression when she met his gaze. She carried a ceramic dish identical to the one sitting in his sink, clear wrap over something thick, brown and meaty. He stood back to let her in.

 

“Remus, you look…” she said, and for a moment she sounded like a little girl again, not a middle-aged woman; someone close to tears.

 

Remus smiled the way he used to do at his students, the way he did now at the men who populated the soup kitchen and the prison, the places he chose to while away his time.

 

“It was a difficult transformation this month,” he told Ginny, reassuring, and he could tell that she wanted to buy it, wanted to believe him. Then she steeled herself, and Remus saw Molly Weasley lurking not far below the surface. She put the dish she was holding down, hard, on Remus’ coffee table, and sat down on the couch without taking her coat off.

 

“Remus,” Ginny said, and then cleared her throat and started again. “Remus, can you please sit down?”

 

“Making the place look untidy?” Remus said, smiling, but his heart was racing in a way that felt decidedly unpleasant.

 

“Please don’t do this,” said Ginny. “Don’t deflect, don’t play the professor.” She took a breath.

 

“I’m not bringing these by anymore,” she said, gesturing to the ceramic dish of food in front of her. “You and I both know it’s not doing any good.”

 

Remus felt sick. The discarded frozen lasagne might as well be spread out on the carpet in front of him, rather than beating a tattoo in the bin under the sink.

 

“I don’t want you to go to any trouble, Ginny,” he said, still hoping that he could avoid the conversation. “I never did.”

 

“That’s not what I meant,” Ginny said, and she wiped a palm over her face. “Remus, I’m not just going to keep watching this happen. I don’t know how long it’s been going on for, and Merlin knows Harry’s convinced you’ve always looked a little unwell and it’s the phases of the moon or grief or whatever other thing he can think of to prevent himself from realising the truth of the matter.

 

“But Remus, I can’t ignore the fact that you’re beyond skeletal and somehow, implausibly, you are thinner every time I see you. You can wrap up in all of that,” she waved a hand at his attire, “And you can protest all you want about your time of the month but I am not _stupid_!” Her voice caught a little on the word.

 

Remus moved to speak, but she stopped him with a look.

 

“I didn’t want to say this for a long time, because I didn’t want to drive you away, and I don’t even know the half of what you’ve been through. But you are going to die -” her voice choked into a sob, and Remus, horrified, reached out a hand to take hers, but she pushed it away.

 

“No, let me finish Remus. You are going to die. I realise your transformations are hard on you, that they leave you unwell, but there is absolutely no chance you are eating even a remotely sufficient amount during the rest of the month.”

 

She looked up at him, eyes wet but fiercely challenging. Remus swallowed the huge lump in his throat.

 

“I eat,” he croaked, and when she looked furious, he nodded, encouraging. “I do eat, Ginny. I’ll try to take better care of myself; I never meant to upset you.”

 

“Bullshit!  I’ve had Teddy crying his eyes out on my couch, convinced that you’re dying,” she said, and his head jerked up in surprise.

  
“Teddy said that?” he asked, and he felt that he was dissolving backwards through a doorway, the world spinning around him. He had let down his son.

 

Ginny’s face softened. “I don’t meant to make you feel guilty, Remus, but why do you think he floo calls you every night? An 18 year-old Hogwarts student?”

 

“He’s a good lad,” Remus said, uncomprehending. “He’s head boy, he has his own fireplace, and he worries about me with his mother gone, here on my own.”

 

“And you’ve been a wonderful father to him,” said Ginny. “He’s never wanted for anything, that boy, and he is kind and good and all of the other things you are. But he’s worrying himself sick about you. And he knows… he knows that he comes second to - whatever this is.” She waved a hand at Remus, who felt older and more tired than he had ever been.

 

“Do you understand me, Remus? Everyone has tiptoed around it for years because they’re scared to make you feel worse. Or they don’t get it - I hear my mum when we all go round for dinner, telling you you’re looking much too thin and to take another helping. And I know it’s not another helping that’s going to make the difference.

 

“I’m sorry if I made it worse, bringing you all this food,” she said, suddenly uncertain again. “I just thought - part of me hoped that perhaps you just couldn’t face cooking for yourself, or you didn’t know how, and I thought perhaps if you had dinner laid on in the fridge you would reheat it and at least I’d know - I’d know you were getting something in.”

 

Her face crumpled, as though both the air and the courage had left her, and this time, she didn’t argue when Remus shifted onto the couch next to her and put his arm around her shoulders.

 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t know if I can give you want you want, but I am really sorry to have caused all this pain for so many people.”

 

“Don’t be sorry,” said Ginny, sniffling. “I don’t know much about this sort of thing, but I see enough to know it isn’t your fault. I don’t know whether you _want_ to eat or not, but I understand that you feel you _can’t_ , for whatever reason. I know you can’t just start eating again, or I’d have yelled at you about it years ago.”

 

Remus laughed, and after a moment, so did Ginny, and he remembered why they were friends.

 

“Ok,” he said, feeling the air shift in the room, as though things were returning to normal. “I hear you, Ginny. I’m glad you talked to me.”

 

“No, don’t do that,” she said, fiercely. “I want you to _do_ something. I want you to decide once and for all that you want to be alive on this planet and actually _do_ something about it.”

 

She must have seen the stricken look on his face because she added, “I mean that you’ll need to talk to someone, Remus. I’m not expecting you to fix it on your own. But you have to want to. Or one night, Teddy will try to floo you and you won’t be there.”

 

Remus felt cold, despite the warmth in the room. Ginny asked for a cup of tea, then - she had always known when to bow out, it was another thing Remus liked about her - and the pair of them talked for awhile about the kids and the goings-on at the Ministry. Remus slid tissues across the table and she dabbed at her eyes.

 

“Right, best be off,” she said, “Got loads to do before the kids come back from tutoring at the Malfoys.”

 

“Now, that arrangement I will never understand,” said Remus, and he brought over her empty dish from the sink to show her out. She pressed the full one into his hands.  


“One more chance,” she said, quietly, and then turning to the door, she added: “ _Do_ something.”

 

Remus turned off the heat, feeling stricken, and, after hurriedly pushing the dish of casserole into the fridge, padded back up the stairs to bed, Ginny’s words ringing behind him.

  
_I want you to decide once and for all that you want to be alive on this planet,_ she had said. Did he? Remus found, when he considered it, that he wasn’t at all sure.


	2. Chapter 2

They were on his mind, their names on his lips, every second of every day, and that was the problem. They were there when he woke up and when he fell asleep; when he was alone and in company. It was like he had taken possession of the resurrection stone Harry had told him about and a small crowd had sprawled out of it and was trailing him around.

James and Lily came first, of course. Remus had lost his innocence earlier than what happened to James and Lily, back when Fenrir Greyback had come stealing into his childhood bedroom. But his life had been, largely, on an upward trajectory after his arrival at Hogwarts and even though Remus had struggled to find work upon graduation, he had been able to spend every day knotted up in the lives of his four closest friends.

He, James, Lily, Sirius and Peter apparated into each other’s front halls, tumbled into each other’s kitchens, laughing or drunk or simply enjoying being young and ridiculous and untrammeled by time. He had not seen Lily and James’ bodies; Dumbledore had not let him, had always seen something sensitive and vulnerable in Remus that he, maddeningly, thought needed protecting.

And Remus had believed that Sirius had killed Peter. He had believed it. He had loved Sirius - more than loved him, had fumbled his first kisses in the dark with Sirius in sixth year, had danced with him at James and Lily’s wedding, had wondered whether they should move in with each other properly, people’s curious stares be damned - and he had still believed it. Sirius and Remus together had been young, testosterone-fuelled, puppy love - they had fought and yelled and drank and fucked - but it would have grown into something deep and lasting if it had only been allowed, Remus was sure.

After Sirius had escaped from Azkaban and the pair were reunited, Remus had been frantic to make up for lost time. They had slid into each other’s beds, sometimes clinging together in passion and sometimes shaken by grief, and Remus had been sure, he had been sure, that the universe had brought Sirius back to him for such a time as this. They would grow old together, grow calm together, smooth out each others’ edges.

And then Sirius had died.

A year later he had fallen into bed with Dora - kind, brave, and deeply weird - and they had been frantic with lust and worry, ignited by the gathering clouds of war. Remus had never been with a woman, had not even begun to stop reeling from the crashing waves of grief that broke over him every time he so much as thought Sirius’ name, but he felt Dora understood that. She had been a generous girl, and strange like he was. After a few months, she had become pregnant - by accident - and Remus had decided that he would love her for the rest of his life. It was rare that people got second chances, and even though he had not felt about Dora the way he had felt about Sirius, he and Dora and the baby were going to be a family and he was going to love and protect them like they were his first and only choice.

He had been there, watching, when the jet of green light had erupted from Bellatrix’s wand, directly into Dora’s chest. And just as he had reached her, Arthur Weasley had deflected a killing curse from Antonin Dolohov that had been aimed at Remus.

Remus had taken Dora in his arms, there on the floor of the Great Hall, and whispered promises into her hair about Teddy and the love he had planned for her but never got the chance to enact. Arthur had stayed watchful behind him, wand out, as Remus clutched Dora’s body on the dusty floor. Harry had needed him, and Remus had not noticed.

Remus had made so many mistakes, had been so selfish, had cared only for himself, and now he had hurt Ginny too. He had hurt Teddy. And there was the paradox: did he eat to make other people happy, even though he did not deserve it? Or did he cause more hurt by giving himself exactly what he deserved? Remus tried to imagine himself at Molly Weasley’s dinner table, laughing with his plate piled high, face filled out; imagined Teddy beside him, delighted that he no longer had to watch his father refuse, restrict, dissemble. The thought of all that food made his throat close up; the thought of himself plump and red-cheeked, feeling everything at once, that he had avoided since he was a little boy.

The alternative was imagining Molly’s dinner table with himself absent from it. Would Teddy be relieved, released from the burden of his father’s behavior, from Molly’s worry and incessant comments? Or would his bright, sweet, gorgeous son be angry and resentful and bitter at the father who had abandoned him?

Remus folded himself more deeply into the covers. “What would you have me do?” he asked the room, realising that he had both directed the question at the memory of Sirius and half expected an answer. None came.

He needed, he realised, someone who could help him tend to his physical exhaustion long enough to figure out what the answer to Ginny’s question was. And that meant, most likely, a doctor. Remus hadn’t seen a wizarding healer in years, not since his regular appointments to have the progress of his lycanthropy checked as a young man. After James and Lily and Sirius and Peter, maintaining a schedule of check-ups at St. Mungos had seemed unimportant.

When he had visited healers as a boy and later, as a Hogwarts student, his eating had - somehow - rarely come up, and when it had, it had always been in the context of the healer merely instructing Remus to eat more, and assuming his or her wishes would be carried out. Poppy Pomfrey had come closest, the year Remus was teaching at Hogwarts, to figuring it out, and that was because she ate dinner in the Great Hall sometimes and observed his behaviour around food, his absences from the top table when the full moon was still days away.

But other healers, busying themselves with an interest in his exotic lupine condition, and assuming a tendency towards gauntness anyway, had never bothered to ask how much he ate.

Was it mad to avoid a wizarding healer because he wanted to know what someone who hadn’t heard of lycanthropy thought about his body? A part of Remus - a large part - worried that this might be perhaps the ultimate act of selfishness, taking up a doctor’s time for this vanity, for an imagined health condition - who even knew what? - on the basis of friends who worried that his plate was not quite full enough at dinner.

But then there had been Teddy, crying on Ginny’s couch, Ginny’s certainty that Remus would die. A small part of him suspected that perhaps she was right; there was something inside his stomach, his chest, his bones that felt as though his body was trying to sound one last, desperate alarm.

Remus had not been allowed to eat much when he had woken up in hospital, after Fenrir Greyback had paid his visit when Remus was five, and the hunger and pain had been his constant waking and sleeping companion. It had marinated in a dawning sense of self-hatred - self-hatred for what he was, what he was putting his family through - and somehow that had never really left him. Remus did not, for whatever reason, like to feel full. He carefully controlled his moods, his emotions, his racing thoughts, his desperate times, by restricting what he ate. Over the years, he had often convinced himself that he ate fairly normally, could blur the idea of what he had eaten in a day or week to imagine it was similar to everyone else’s daily or weekly habits.

Besides, he did not entirely believe Ginny’s comments about his body. Remus knew he was not buried in grotesque layers of fat and he had taken to avoiding mirrors, so confused was his mind by the contradictory images of what he saw and felt, which sometimes changed from hour to hour. But he knew the underlying truth: that his body was wide, and boxy - his height, his shoulders, his hips; he took up more space than he should. Snaking a hand under the covers, Remus felt the bulk of one thigh. Ginny took after her mother, and Molly still thought Harry - who had not been hungry for a moment since he was 11 years old - was a malnourished waif. Remus felt embarrassed seeing a doctor when - quite aside from the silliness of the whole thing - he was hardly wasting away.

What if he simply did nothing? Would Ginny have the nerve to raise the matter again? Could he lie and told her a check-up had revealed nothing? But there was Teddy, of course, and there was the way Remus felt, as though his body was giving up, exhaling in finality.

Remus pulled the small laptop computer - barely used, except when he needed to engage with the Muggle world - off the nightstand, deciding that if he was going to do this, he was going someplace he would not be recognised. It occurred to him that if a wizarding healer found something seriously wrong with him - which they wouldn’t, of course, but suppose they did - it would be difficult for him to avoid being treated for it, perhaps even against his will. With a Muggle doctor - a general practitioner, they seemed to be called - he could simply choose not to return.

He found a practice not far away where he could book an appointment without talking to anyone on the telephone. Remus was still not sure, even when he had noted down the date and time on a card in his wallet, whether he would actually go. But he told himself that if he did, there was no commitment to changing anything; no one could force him. And he wasn’t going to raise his eating himself, either; he would just go for a checkup, and if the matter was never mentioned, he would be vindicated and he would tell Ginny so.

So decided, and trying to calm his roiling mind, he selected a book to read in bed until his shift at the soup kitchen. Remus had money - Sirius’ family fortune - that he had barely touched; his only indulgence had been this small townhouse, and that had really been for Teddy to have a safe, comfortable place to grow up in. They had lived frugally, on Remus’ pension from the Ministry for his services to the Order and the war effort, and Teddy had not been a demanding child. There had been enough for camping holidays with the Potters, spoiling Teddy with a racing broom for his twelfth birthday, and tickets to Quidditch matches, but Remus had never bothered buying a car, and his monthly condition meant he didn’t feel comfortable traveling too far from home.

He had homeschooled Teddy himself, which had occupied his days for nigh on 11 years, and had become keenly aware of the gaping chasm of time opening up when his son headed off to Hogwarts. Now Remus volunteered at a nearby soup kitchen three days a week, with a shift starting mid-afternoon, and every Thursday he took the bus out to HM Prison, where he ran, alternately, a writing group and a book club. He was under no illusions about saving anyone: he liked odd people and nobody judged him either place. He fit in there.

One of the regulars at the shelter, Justin, was fond of telling Remus he needed to “take a scoop for yourself by the looks of it” when Remus ladled food onto the younger man’s plate, but it was always said in good humour, and Remus always laughed. After dinner, he liked to sit in the weak, lingering light in the courtyard out the back with the men from the shelter’s substance use program, listening while they talked and occasionally joining in. He had never smoked, but he kept a pack of cheap cigarettes in his pocket, always, so that he could flick one out when someone was short (he had come prepared with Marlboros his second week and the men had teased him about them, so now he bought Chesterfield or B&H like they did). It made him feel like he wasn’t a freak for a few hours, not in comparison to the men there but because he was like them: broken but still alive, somehow.

A couple of hours before Remus was due at the shelter, he padded downstairs to see what he could bring himself to do in the kitchen. He pulled the ceramic dish from the fridge, ladled a soup spoon full of casserole into a bowl, and put it in the microwave. It smelled all wrong, and as the machine whirred, he could feel the itching begin under his skin.

Remus didn’t know what was in this; didn’t know how long it had been out of the fridge before Ginny had arrived at his house. What if it made him sick? And she was trying to fill him out, after all; who knew what ingredients she’d used? Remus grabbed the bowl from the microwave and poured it into the bin, followed a moment later by the rest of the casserole in the ceramic dish. He was breathing hard again, and when his eyes lit on the ladle, which was oozing brown gravy onto the bench, he frantically rinsed it off, along with the bowl, and dried them right away, wiping the smear of casserole off the sink. That felt better. He knotted the top of the bin bag and put it next to the internal door to the garage, so he wouldn’t forget to take it out of the house when he left.

He had a box of protein bars in the cupboard; one of those would help his muscles feel stronger after the change. That and some more tea, and a brisk walk to the soup kitchen, and his head would be feeling clearer. Remus knew himself, he thought; he didn’t need a doctor to tell him how to live. But as he sat at the table, his eyes were drawn, over and over again, to the rubbish bag with the casserole in it, by the back door. He couldn’t be comfortable in this room until it was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Remus visits a doctor. This story is personal and hard to be objective about, so please do let me know what you think!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note of caution to this chapter: I know a lot of people with eating disorders play the “game” of not mentioning their weight or eating to a doctor to see whether the doctor will ask about it, and if the doctor doesn’t, using that as evidence that they are not ill enough to have an eating disorder. But doctors are not mind-readers, and it is best, if you can, to be direct and honest about your or your family’s concerns, embarrassing as it might be in the moment. Please also know that a doctor not guessing or picking up that you might have an eating disorder is absolutely no indication that you do not have one. Remus in this story has been unwell for 50 years, and is at a point where he is very visibly and obviously ill, but he has also had numerous healers over the years fail to notice his condition when they should have. If a doctor is not concerned about your eating or weight when you know it is a problem, please seek out another doctor or a second opinion, and be as honest with that person as you can possibly be. Thank you, PSA over!

Remus sat in a sunny spot in the doctor’s waiting room, feeling like his heart was about to pound out of his body. He could not believe he was there, that he hadn’t turned heel and walked straight back out again. He could not believe he had brought this on himself. 

 

Because he, Remus Lupin, had done this.  _ He _ had booked the appointment.  _ He _ had set an alarm for this morning, and selected an outfit - collared shirt and slacks, with a thick grey cardigan, scarf and blazer; the shirt and slacks purchased for a theremin recital of Teddy’s at Hogwarts a couple of years back when he had wanted to look smart, a little looser on him now than they had been then - and then he had left the house with more enough time to walk to the doctor’s surgery.

 

Remus had been tempted to tell Ginny about the appointment but demurred, wanting an out if he decided not to go. But here he was, jiggling one leg over the other in a padded chair, his fingers finding the fraying threads on the seat’s underside. There were only a couple of people in the waiting room with him; an older woman and a younger one with a toddler, who smiled gently - perhaps a little pitying? - at Remus when he entered.

 

Remus’ name was called and he felt frantic. If he were to leave now he would draw much more attention to himself than if he just went through with it, he thought, and besides, the doctor was unlikely to notice much. Remus certainly did not plan to throw him any rope. With that reassurance, he stood up, gently - as he had become accustomed - and followed a tall, strapping blond man, probably only 10 years younger than himself, into a standard-issue doctor’s office.

 

“Horst,” the man said, turning to face Remus, with a wide smile and a Germanic accent Remus couldn’t exactly place. Remus returned a proffered handshake and took a seat in the chair the doctor indicated. His head felt like a hot air balloon with a warning siren going off inside; something was urging him, begging him, not to tell this doctor anything, to leave the office with his life preserved exactly how he liked it. The secret he was keeping felt like a bomb about to go off in his brain. 

 

He reminded himself that his life wasn’t exactly how he liked it. He had trouble getting around. He had made his son cry. And his twice-daily trips to the kitchen hung over him all day like a knife suspended above one shoulder.

 

He tried to calm the tic in his foot.

 

“Right,” said Horst, “Tell me a bit about yourself, Remus. What do you do?”

 

It was not the first question Remus had been expecting - this doctor was much friendlier than he recalled others being, and he did not like to feel disarmed, so he stumbled a little on the answer.

 

“Erm, well, I, ah… I raised my son alone before he went to boarding school, and that kept me busy. And since then - well, it’s been more than six years - I’ve been working volunteer jobs. I get a - I mean, I get an army pension, and I live on that, and I volunteer at a soup kitchen and the prison every week.”

 

That the army had been Dumbledore’s he thought it better not to mention, but it was a complicated lie if the doctor chose to ask questions about it. Remus prayed he didn’t.

 

“That certainly sounds like a most productive way to spend your time,” the other man said. “Good on you for contributing so much. Now, I can see you haven’t filled in the name of your last doctor - it really would help, if you decide to forge ahead with our professional relationship, for me to have access to previous doctors’ notes.”

 

Remus squirmed. “I sort of haven’t been to a doctor in a very long time,” he said, flushing. “I mean, I can’t even remember the last time I did, or where it was.”

 

“Ah, right,” said Horst, with a low laugh. “One of those ‘I last had the flu in 1975, I’m much too tough for doctors’ types. Don’t worry, I see it all the time, especially in men our age. Never mind, you can always let me know where your files might be if you remember later. Now, what brings you in to see me today?”

 

This was the moment, and Remus opened and shut his mouth. He wanted it to be over; he just didn’t know what exactly he meant by “over.” He decided to split the difference.

 

“I’m having some trouble with tiredness,” he told the doctor. “I’m exhausted all the time, and I’m having trouble staying as active as I always used to be. It might just be me getting old,” he said apologetically, “But a friend had noticed how drained I was as well and suggested I come to see someone.”

 

“Right,” said Horst, who had turned away from the computer and was facing Remus directly. 

 

“Other than this exhaustion, are you otherwise in good health?”

 

Remus thought about his monthly transformation and the way it made his bones ache. “Sure,” he said. “I mean, I haven’t seen a doctor in years.”

 

“Any medication you’re on?”

 

“No,” Remus shook his head.

 

“OK. Do you sleep all right?”

 

“Not well,” said Remus. “On and off, actually. I’ve never been a great sleeper, but I’ve gone through phases where it’s worse than other times.”

 

“All right. So that’s perhaps not any different to usual. Do you get a sense, within yourself, that this exhaustion is something coming from your mind, or is it physical? Are you struggling to convince yourself to do the things you used to enjoy doing, or is it that the mind feels willing, but the body - et cetera, et cetera, you know?”

 

“Ah, um. I do think…” Remus swallowed hard. “I do think it does feel physical, yes.”

 

“OK. And no other major illnesses or surgeries, no hospitalisations you might have had in the past?”

 

“No,” he lied, because being a werewolf was not a topic he was about to raise.

 

“Right, well that’s the hard bit done,” Horst smiled, and Remus looked up in surprise, before he realised the other man was joking. 

 

“Relax, Remus, I do this all the time, you know,” he said. “Now, I’m just going to check a few things. I’m going to test your temperature in your ear here, if you don’t mind?”

 

Remus said he didn’t, and the man wheeled closer on his chair to take the measurement. 

 

“OK, that’s a little cool,” the doctor hummed, making a note of it. “And I’ll just get your blood pressure while I’m over here as well. Do you mind popping your jacket off?”   
  


Remus did as he was asked, and soon felt the cuff tightening over his bicep, through the weight of his cardigan. 

 

“Hmm,” said Horst. “Is your blood pressure normally low, do you know?”

 

“Yes,” said Remus. “Well, when I was a young man, at least; doctors often mentioned it.”

 

He omitted to say that it had usually been mentioned in reference to the fact that werewolves’ blood pressure tended unusually high, and so for Remus to have slightly lower than usual human blood pressure meant it was very low indeed for a creature like him. 

 

“Usually our blood pressure trends upwards over the course of our adult lives, but I suppose you’re just lucky,” Horst said with a jaunty wink. “Now, you’re what - 6 foot 1, 6-2?”

 

“About that,” Remus said, feeling his throat constrict a little. He had hoped that this wasn’t coming, and yet here it was. At the same time - wouldn't discovery be such a relief? He couldn't decide.

 

“OK, well how about we double-check since I’m starting a new file for you,” said Horst, light and casual as he had been earlier. “Kick off your shoes there, there’s a gent, and perhaps if you wouldn’t mind taking that lovely cardy and scarf off as well.”

 

Remus did so and stood up carefully, feeling like he was walking to the gallows. 

 

“Just pop your heels against the wall here and stand up straight, chin down, and let’s see… Ah, a little over 6 foot 2, but we do round down, I’m afraid,” he said, grinning again and patting Remus’ shoulder. 

 

“All right… And if you could just pop up on the scales there, final thing,” he said, gesturing to the square of metal next to his desk. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is continued in a second part, up next.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a continuation of the previous chapter, concluding Remus' visit to the GP.

Remus had not stood on a scale in some years now. He’d last thrown a set out when Teddy had flooded the bathroom by blocking the tub on the washing machine, destroying the inner workings on Remus’ good scales, about five years ago when he had been home for summer hols. Remus had intended to buy new ones, already anxious that the next set would be differently calibrated and he would not be able to keep any continuity of tracking his weight.

 

But Teddy had said, off-hand, after apologising to Remus about destroying the contraption, “How about you just don’t buy new ones, Dad? There’s no need, after all - neither of us are using them for anything. I don’t see why people feel the need to keep scales in their bathroom anyway. I really am sorry though - I’ll pay you back.”

 

And Remus had declined the offer of payment and had not replaced the scales. Teddy so rarely mentioned anything to do with his father’s eating habits or health that Remus was loathe to go against him when he did, and besides, he felt odd purchasing a set of scales he would then have to hide in his bedroom when Teddy was home. That was the sort of thing that someone with a problem did, and Remus did not have a problem. Perhaps, he thought, things would even get a little easier if he wasn’t checking his weight every day; it wasn’t that he wanted the number to go down, he just wanted to be sure it was not creeping up.

 

But divesting himself of the scale had not made anything easier, and now here Remus was, facing the old foe again. He stepped on, in socked feet, and felt Horst lean around him. He dared not look down.

 

“OK, that’s, oh, that’s eight and a half stone,” said the other man, his breezy demeanour faltering for a moment. “All right, Remus, you can take a seat again - please do put any of your things back on if you’re cold.”

 

Remus sat down in his socks, doing the sums in his head and suddenly feeling very old. 122 pounds was less than he had seen on a scale in many years; certainly five years ago, when his scale had broken, he had been, what 15 pounds more? A couple of years before that, when Teddy had gone off to Hogwarts, it had been perhaps… 20? Part of him felt exhilarated by the number; part of him terrified.

 

 _But of course_ , the nasty little voice told him, _that was with a different scale._ Fluctuations could be huge; he might weigh 130 pounds or even more, or the floor might have been uneven or - Remus hadn’t even seen the number himself, he’d just let the doctor look - what if Horst had lied to him about it? Remus shook his head. Why on earth would a doctor lie?

 

Horst turned back from his computer, where he had been loudly clacking numbers into the keyboard.

 

“OK, Remus,” he said, and he was smiling again, but there was something gentle in his voice, something knowing. “I’ve got a few questions for you. You’re not on any kind of strange diet are you? I get a lot of that in here; I’ve pretty much seen it all at this point.”

 

“I bet,” Remus said, forcing his lips upwards. “But no, I’m not.”

 

“Right,” said Horst. “So what’s your eating like? Have you got much of an appetite?”

 

Remus looked for an out. “I’ve never had a huge appetite, but I eat - “ he had been going to say ‘plenty’ but it felt like that was pushing his luck, “I eat pretty consistently, yes.” He spread his hands as if to show puzzlement.

 

“Have you lost any weight recently, or has your current weight been the norm for a while?” Horst asked.

 

Remus wiped his hands on his trousers. “I don’t have a scale at home,” he said truthfully, “But I think it’s been the same for a while.”

 

“Weeks? Months?”

 

“Erm, I’d say years, actually.”

 

“OK,” Horst said, and he put his big, meaty hands on his knees, and looked up. “Remus, you’re an adult, so I’m going to level with you. I won’t couch this like I do with my younger patients. I could see when you walked in here that you weren’t looking in full health; it’s fairly obvious. But you are extraordinarily underweight for your height, not to mention your age, and it’s fairly alarming to hear that you’ve been existing at this weight for a period of years. Your body must be terribly run down; it’s no wonder you’re exhausted.

 

“This isn’t a matter of not having much appetite, or absent-mindedly forgetting to eat, and I do think you knew that when you came in here, which I am very glad you did. I understand these things are hard to discuss, so I will give you two options: either you honestly do believe you are eating perfectly normally, in which case I’d need to order a full battery of tests to try to get to the bottom of a diagnosis for you… Probably quite invasive tests - it would be a lot, but I’m happy to set the wheels in motion if there’s no other explanation for your current weight.

 

“Or,” he said, looking meaningfully at Remus, “The alternative is that you’ve been drastically under-eating, probably for quite a long time, long enough to reach a point where you’re close enough to two stone underweight. So, what do you reckon, Remus? Which one do you think it is?”

 

Remus panicked. He had not really - not honestly - expected to hear a doctor say the words, and now here he was, poised on the precipice. He could not very well say that he was eating normally, not when it meant a phalanx of tests, tying up appointments and specialists that other people, properly sick people, could have had. On the other hand…

 

He thought about Teddy, and about the number, eight and a half stone, and about the conflicted, awful, exuberant feeling he’d had when he heard it. He thought about how this might be his only chance.

 

“It’s, um…” Remus swallowed, hard, and coughed to clear his throat. “It’s the second one.”

 

“The under-eating? That’s good to know, Remus; thanks for being honest with me,” said Horst, so gently that Remus looked up from his fists balled on his thighs and met the other man’s eyes.

 

“OK now,” the other man continued. “I’m not sure anything that happens from here is going to be easy, in fact, probably quite the opposite. But I think I understand where this exhaustion is coming from. You’ll need blood tests and a bone scan to be sure, but I think we can say that most of what’s troubling you is coming from malnutrition. I’m not a specialist in eating disorders, and we’ll have to find one for you, but I think that much is pretty clear.”

 

Remus felt his face flush, and ducked his head again. To be a middle-aged man and to have someone say - to suggest… He looked up.

 

“Eating disorders?” he heard himself ask.

 

“Yes, Remus,” said Horst, gently. “To be more precise, I’m going to suggest a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa in order to get you into the mental health system, and someone more expert than me can finesse it from there.”

 

“But isn’t that -” Remus’ mind was full of troubled young girls pinching their stomachs in front of mirrors. “It isn’t - I don’t believe I’m fat, I’m not on a diet…” He trailed off.

 

“A common misconception,” said the doctor. “What is key to the diagnosis is a consistent refusal of food - and I think you’ve agreed that that explains your current condition - and a persistent refusal to maintain a healthy body weight. You didn’t wind up eight and a half stone at six foot two by accident, Remus, and in my opinion, anorexia is the most suitable diagnosis to explain what’s happening here.”

 

“Is there a…” Remus fought to get the words out, fought to stay in the seat, to stay under control… “Is there a treatment for it?”

 

“Well,” said the doctor, and he smiled, but the smile looked rather sad. “That’s the thing. I can prescribe a little to help your state of mind, any anxieties you’re having around food, but the truth is that food is your medicine. It’s what’s going to get you well. You’re going to need to gain a couple of stone for starters -”

 

“Two stone?” Remus broke in. He couldn’t help himself. The man might as well as him to fly to the moon or sing an operetta in Italian; Remus could barely maintain the weight he was at. To think about all the food he’d have to cram down - thousands of calories - and then to get up and do it again, day after day, for weeks and months, or, Merlin forbid, years… There was no way he could bring himself to do all that. There was no way he wanted to. 

 

Horst looked at his computer screen again. “Honestly, Remus, I don’t want to scare you but a stone and a half would barely scrape you into the lowest healthy weight for your height, and that’s going by an indicator called Body Mass Index, which is a notoriously blunt and unhelpful tool. For a man of your height and age, because men are supposed to gain a little weight as they age, it’s normal - not to mention the mending needed to your bones and organs from years of malnutrition - I’d be recommending you gained three stone just for starters, and then see how your mind and body felt then.

 

“You’d still be very slim,” he added, seeing Remus’ dismayed expression. “Certainly at the light end for your age and height. But it’d be a good place to take better stock of how you were feeling. A starving brain does terrible things to a person, but if you can bear to get to a place where you’re not starving anymore, things will look very different, I’m certain of it.”

 

Remus nodded slowly, but he was horrified. A gain of three stone would take him to, what, 165 pounds or so? He could feel, actually feel, paunch pushing against his waistband, hips straining his trousers; his thighs were already thick, but they would be heavy, cumbersome things. He tried to imagine moving through the world with three extra stone, more than he’d ever weighed. He tried to imagine everything he would be able to feel, his senses heightened. He blinked at the doctor.

 

“Isn’t there - something else?” he asked.

 

The doctor shook his head, a little sadly. “I’m afraid there isn’t,” he said.

 

He checked his watch. “OK, unfortunately I’m going to have to head for my next patient soon, and I’m very sorry about that,” he said. “I can see you’re in a little bit of shock, and I don’t want you to feel like I’ve dropped this bombshell and vanished. So here’s what I’m going to do.

 

“I’m going to send through a referral, today, to the community mental health unit that assesses people for eating disorder treatment, but I’m afraid there’s not a lot here in Wales and that process could take some time,” Horst said, rifling in a desk drawer. “But please don’t worry, because I am going to make it my mission to make sure we get you the right treatment for this. I’m on your side, OK?”

 

“OK,” said Remus, feeling worse and worse.

 

“I’d actually like you to come back - let’s say in a week, you can book an appointment on the way out - and we’ll have another quarter-hour then, so I’d like to talk to you about any anxiety or other issues you’re having around food, because there are medications I can prescribe to make your headspace a little easier when you’re trying to change your eating habits.

 

He made a note on a piece of paper and passed it to Remus.

 

“I’m also going to ask you to head into this address over the next couple of days and have a blood test and get scheduled for a bone scan, which will help me prescribe anything for any nutrient deficiencies you might have. We can discuss the blood test next week if the results are back by then.

 

“And finally,” he paused, and waited for Remus to make eye contact, “Finally, Remus, and I know this will be the hardest thing of all, but I really need for you to do everything you can before I see you next to try and rest as much as you’re able, and get your food intake up as far as you can. I can tell you don’t quite believe me, but you’ll just have to trust me when I say you’re very unwell, and that better nutrition is going to be the key thing to helping fix it.

 

“A referral to a specialised eating disorder service could take a while - which is unacceptable, but that’s the system - and you can’t afford to lose any more weight in the meantime. So I’m going to ask you to take this fairly awful pamphlet -” he grinned and handed over a glossy brochure, “Which has a lot of stuff in it that you can largely ignore, but it does outline a sample of the amounts you should be eating to begin recovering from this level of malnutrition. It’s by no means prescriptive, and you’ll get a personal meal plan from someone eventually, but it’s just an idea for now of how much, and what sorts of food, you need to eat.”

 

Remus took the brochure with a nod of thanks. He couldn’t bear to look.

  
  
“What if…” he tried to articulate anything, just to pick any one of the thoughts floating through his scrambled brain in that moment, “What if I don’t have… _that?_ ” He could not bring himself to say the words _anorexia_ or _eating disorder._ “I think it’s possible that I’m just very sad.” He tried to laugh a little, and Horst gave a wry smile.

 

“Well, it’s certainly possible that you’ve been doubly blessed,” said Horst, and Remus, in that moment, honestly did like him. “But whether the problem is clinical anorexia or not, you do urgently need to put on weight; I'm very concerned about your health, and if I thought there was a chance I could get you accepted to a treatment program right now, today, I would absolutely pull out all the stops to do so. But I can't, so let’s just cross these bridges one at a time, shall we?”

 

“All right,” said Remus, helpless, and he pushed himself slowly out of the chair. Horst smiled and waved when he deposited Remus in the waiting room - not before ensuring that Remus had made a follow-up appointment - and moments later, he found himself blinking in the late morning sun outside the surgery, thrusting the papers into his jacket pocket and wondering what the hell had just happened.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know any thoughts or questions about this story - I have a plan, but would love input. Thank you!


End file.
